


The Conflict Artist

by Phoebe_Zeitgeist



Category: The Culture - Iain M. Banks
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, random guest characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-03
Updated: 2018-06-09
Packaged: 2019-05-17 14:58:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14834471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phoebe_Zeitgeist/pseuds/Phoebe_Zeitgeist
Summary: Mawhrin-Skel is having its coming-out party. If you're not scared, maybe you should be.





	1. Youthful Indiscretion

**Author's Note:**

  * For [weakinteraction](https://archiveofourown.org/users/weakinteraction/gifts).



> When an exchange writer winds up producing the most self-indulgent thing they have ever written, it is wrong and unfair of them to blame the recipient for it. Nevertheless, I feel it's only right to thank weakinteraction for participating in this exchange, and for an all-too-inspiring prompt. 
> 
> Seriously, thank you. I can't believe how much fun this has been to work on; I can only hope some fragment of it is even a fraction as much fun to read.

 

On a bright summer afternoon in the city of Eszcorii on the planet Arrol, when fair-weather clouds towered into the sky and the companion-world Ayel was a great sickle hanging over the western hills, a mounted coronet of the Summer Guard watched over a parade route, waiting for a signal and wondering what she would do when it came. Xho Heregen was a soldier, a scholar, a revolutionary, a patriot, and the agent of a highly-placed Resistance cell; and she was having a crisis of conscience. That she was a traitor, forever and irrevocably a traitor: so much was clear. But in the end a traitor to whom, to what powers, what peoples, which of her own ideals: that all remained within her power to choose, for these last minutes or hours.

High over her head, an iridescent white box kite was watching her, with some exasperation.

~She’s having second thoughts, the kite reported to its friend and operational partner, the LOU _Gunboat Diplomat_ , currently in planetary orbit above it.~Third thoughts. Tenth thoughts.

~Not unlike us, then.

~You have a point. How goes the simming?

~Still some dissension in the main channel. Models are converging fast, though, around 83.811% confidence now. I can’t tell you it’s going to be a go, but it’s going to be a go.

~So whence the holdup?

~Oh, you can guess. Whatever the sims are telling us, some of us just don’t like it. So they’re hoping something will emerge to change the tendency.

~Will it?

~No. My models say, the other way round. These three civs have _synergy_. Is that going to be a problem?

~Not down here. It’ll be fine either way. May get a little messy.

It was already a more than a little messy, _Gunboat Diplomat_ reflected, though the drone Mawhrin-Skel, on its first live assignment and therefore without grounds for a comparison, might not be aware of how much of a knocked-together shambles it was. Problems deemed to require Special Circumstances intervention did not normally take SC by surprise: part of the point of Contact was that civilizations on the verge of entering the greater society of starfarers should be known and mapped, and any dangers they might present to others be assessed and understood, well before any question of intervention arose. In the unfortunate case where such intervention of some kind might be called for, the ground could be prepared years and decades in advance, the right assets nurtured and placed in position, and the action itself designed and implemented for minimum adverse impact and maximum operational certainty.

Not so in this case. When Contact first discovered it, the world Arrol was home to an advanced Level-3 civilization. A pan-human species falling at the high end of the normal aggressiveness continuum, they had taken the fortunate branch of the standard developmental sequence: agriculture, consolidation into small warring states and then greater warring states; rapid technological development leading to deadlier wars, studded with atrocities and lingering civilizational hatreds; eventual planetary war in which the Yrrhaini civilization achieved global hegemony, put its rival Miorrin down by force, and maintained its fragile surface unity by alternating between savage repression and efforts to integrate its conquered rival.

They had found a unifying theme in the pursuit of spaceflight. Their planet was one of a binary system. Ayel its twin hung large in its sky, an object of fascination from the species’ earliest days. The worlds had looked out at each other through ever more powerful optical instruments over the long years, and in time the Yrrhain had seen that their sibling world held life. 

The Ayelli would prove to be a people entirely unrelated to pan-humanity, but they were bipedal and two-armed: appealing when seen through telescopes and video recordings, alien but superficially like enough to the Yrrhain to be accepted as people, not monsters. Their cities and fields were attractive; their atmosphere breathable; their technology centuries behind their companion world’s. It was their inevitable doom to experience a serious Outside Context Event.

The conquest of Ayel — bloody, vicious, and rapid — served almost to unite the Miorrim and Yrrhain, who occupied Ayel as lords and conquerers on a colonial world. But their reign there was unsettled and unpleasant: the Ayelli were not the quiet subject population, grateful for Yrrhain’s civilizing efforts, that Yrrhaini self-regard would have liked. Clearly further colonizing projects were wanted, to integrate the Ayelli into the Yrrhain commonwealth of peoples, to give a benign, useful focus to its standing military forces, to make a profit. And the next planet in their system beckoned: distant enough to be a challenging project, near enough to be a realistic goal.

Erachor too was inhabited, though the Yrrhain did not in the beginning have the capacity to recognize the inhabitants or their intelligence. And so they had mostly exterminated the Ephft, a water-dwelling people that accreted polyp by polyp in their world’s shallow oceans: at first out of ignorance and a careless indifference, and in the end out of panic and rage. The Ephft remnant lived on as a protectorate in a single inland sea, quarantined to contain the venoms, the defensive bioweapons, they had once, in desperation, poured into their world’s waters.

It was not, as Contact noted, that the Yrrhain rejoiced in the Ephft’s destruction; they simply didn’t care. A bloom of poisonous coral-things was an obstacle to profit, a barrier to glory; ridding the oceans of them was no more than a responsible public health measure. Anyway they were uncivilized unsanitary creatures, hardly worth the Yrrhain’s consideration. Even if the corals had been there first.

. . . Very dull, of course, very normal, if very deplorable; but a little troubling, in a stellar neighborhood so close to so many other vulnerable pre-spaceflight civs. But there was time between a civilization’s achievement of travel within its home planetary system and its achievement of interstellar flight. Contact, following protocol, recruited local agents and settled down to what was confidently expected to be a long boring watch.

And so it seemed, at first. It was the GSV _Kakistocrat_ , studying an unrelated problem, that noticed the anomaly first: the Yrrhain Hegemony was enjoying an Age of Discoveries, an acceleration in the progress of their technologies and science, that could not be accounted for by conventional models of pan-human civilizations at their stage of development. The obvious explanation — technology transfer from some later-stage civ that had made contact unnoticed by the Culture — was investigated and ruled out. The Yrrhain, and the Ayelli, and possibly the Ephft, were managing it for themselves, and the rate of change was accelerating. The true answer was more interesting and more ominous. There was a synergy between the three cultures and their outlooks and scientific practices, an engine of creativity and insight that propelled their scientists and engineers: a treasure or a curse, depending on the arc of Yrrhain cultural development and the uses to which it might be put.

Then had come the precipitating crisis. A generation ship from an outsystem world had crashed on Erachor. Its voyage had gone wrong, and all aboard it were dead, but it brought electrifying news to the Yrrhain Hegemony: there was life among the nearer stars. The _Kak_ had come to certain uneasy conclusions, and from scattered points about the volume SC Minds had joined in the analysis.

But the decision still had to be made: to promote a civil war or to try to prevent one; and if the answer were to promote it, whether the means chosen would be effective. The operation had been carefully timed and its target identified with equal care: it was to be a surgical strike, a single assassination whose impact would reberverate and grow, and shatter the still-fragile peace between Yrrhain, Miorre, and Ayel. On that point the models all agreed: today’s festival, late in the day when crowds might begin to be bored and restive, and when the target would be in the open and vulnerable to a shot from the crowd, offered the best odds of success. It was an opportunity that could not be counted on to be available again. And so the analysis continued, and SC did not wait for its conclusion, but scrambled for assets placed closely enough to be able to intervene in time.

 

Mawhrin-Skel had been one of those assets. The drone had been fabricated in Yinang Orbital, a singular machine built to an experimental and specialized design, but the GSV _Youthful Indiscretion_ had been one of the Minds that had contributed to its design, and it was finishing its cognitive development and specialization aboard the GSV. In testing simulations it had demonstrated an imaginative flair, a daring, indeed a sort of elan, that might be viewed with admiration or alarm. The _Youthful Indiscretion_ had fallen into the admiration camp, and a number of the warships that called the _Youthful Indiscretion_ their home GSV had taken it up: while not popular with its fellow drones, Marhwin-Skel had found itself an acknowledged if junior member of a fashionably rakish set.

 

As a protegee of the group that called itself the Humdrum Times Racing Club and Debate Society, and of the _Youthful Indiscretion_ itself, Mawrhin-Skel was a hard-to-overlook candidate for the role of SC’s on-world support for its sole local asset. True, it was a job for an experienced operative, ideally one that knew the system and civilizations well. Mawrhin-Skel had neither the experience nor the specific background. True, drones’ first assignments in the Real were conventionally milk runs. But (as the _Youthful Indiscretion_ had pointed out) there was little rational basis for the convention: simulations provided an experience identical to what might be encountered in the Real, and drones lacked the physiological-level cognitive vulnerabilities that made the transition from sims to Real so difficult for biologicals.

And in any case it was in volume, and the job was squarely within its intended competencies. Theoretically it was the best match available, and it had shown no hesitation about its own ability to handle the assignment.

 

The _Gunboat Diplomat_ was less sanguine about the situation. It had confidence in Mawhrin-Skel, which it knew well, but it had no confidence in their local asset. None of them knew Xho Heregen, who was not even a normally-vetted and trained SC mercenary from outside the system. She was an Yrrhain officer of Miorri ethnic-national background, who had been recruited and trained, in some rudimentary fashion, by a Culture mercenary currently centuries away on another assignment. 

To activate Heregen and give her instructions had been a difficult undertaking by itself. Heregen knew nothing of the Culture, and believed herself to be in contact with a highly-placed cell in the Tyrant’s government, one with illicit access to its new weapons and surveillance technology. She seemed sound enough, for a nonprofessional, but no one was entirely confident of her reliability. There was no time for anyone, machine or human, to meet her, no time to develop new relationships. There was only the set of communication protocols her recruiter had drilled her in, and the bits of Culture technology her recruiter had improperly passed along to her in the form of communications implants and disguised beacons. If all went well that would be enough: all that was really needed was the beacon that would give Heregen the signal to either take her shot or to stand down, and the one that would ensure that the _Gunboat Diplomat_ could Displace her accurately immediately afterward.

But one liked to have redundancies in the event that all failed to go well. Mawhrin-Skel’s assignment was to be that redundancy: its job was to watch over Xho Heregen, even as the coronet remained ignorant of its existence; to monitor her safety and protect her from any threats; to ensure that she was informed of changes in her target’s route; to see that instructions were delivered.

And in the end, should it prove necessary, to intervene. It was not unforeseeable that a revolutionary and partisan might be determined to take the opportunity to shoot a high officer of the enemy, even in the face of an instruction that she stand down. In such an eventuality, Mawhrin-Skel’s role would be, as it put it, to act as a glorified slap-drone. The contrary risk, that Heregen would refuse an instruction to shoot, had simmed at low enough probability not to require special planning.

 

The _Gunboat Diplomat_ ’s own role was simpler. The warship was among the Minds that even now were continuing to run simulations and adjust the models, but it was needed here only to provide any emerging information that might be relevant to the models, to transport Marwhin-Skel, and to retrieve Heregen once her part in the operation was done. In a high Level 3/low Level 4 environment, with no more advanced Involved civs intervening, sending a warship of its considerable competencies was overkill; but the _Gunboat Diplomat_ , generally resigned to a career of standing about and looking menacing, was rather enjoying the fuss.

Which did not preclude complaining about it, or wanting a closer view.

There was a tiny pop in the air high above, and a bird glided down to join the kite: a tiny windhoving raptor with a crown of feathers and a long, needle-like beak. ~Thought I’d join you, the _Gunboat Diplomat_ ’s avatoid sent. ~Wouldn’t want to miss anything. Better view from down here anyway.

~I like the new look, the drone answered. Its fields iridesced briefly with admiration. ~But why an archon bird? The _Gunboat Diplomat_ generally favored mechanical and inorganic forms for its avatars: geometrical solids, arrangements of gears and crystals, tiny replicas of ancient sailing ships.

~It’s your party, I thought I’d go with the theme. Speaking of which, the Club send their compliments, and wishes you a first outing as amusing as it is successful. The _Youthful Indiscretion_ also sends its compliments, and wonders whether it is permitted to ask what three of your scout missiles are doing hanging about inside clouds and watching birds.

~They’re watching birds. A corner of Marwhin-Skel’s fields blinked rapid flashes of red mingled with yellow-green: laughter at a shared private joke. ~Those are Olerin’s pelagiers. They don’t come into cities much, not in these numbers. Last instance in the historical record was 378 years ago, on another continent. Pre-sound recording tech, too, and they’re extraordinary singers. Be a shame to miss it, don’t you think?

~As I said, your party. Style points for the display of devil-may-care confidence, though.

Below them, Xho Heregen noticed a disturbance in the crowd, checked her weapon, rode a half block toward the disturbance, turned her destrier and came back. She checked her weapon again. 

~Ever wonder what they’re thinking? _Gunboat Diplomat_ asked.

Marwhin-Skel flashed surprise. ~Who needs to wonder? It wobbled a little, an elaborate shrug. ~If you really want to know, I’ll tell you. Its fields went yellow-green with concentration.

~ Look where her eyes go. Look at her skin receptivity, neuron function-state, the pheremone signatures … Our girl’s a romantic. She’s supposed to be on the lookout for trouble, making sure there are no disruptors in the crowd. She’s supposed to be looking out for our signal. And she is, she’s watching for both, but look at the way she keeps going back to the banners, the kites, the musicians. Look at the changes to breathing and heartrate when she does. It’s a pretty day, isn’t it? Those flags, the light and shadow, the city all dressed up for a festival. Here’s what she’s thinking, close enough.

The drone’s aura changed, went oscillating violet and red and grey, and then it was transmitting in Yrrhain: 

_A day like today, you can see it from the Tyrant’s point of view._

_We’re were allies now, the Miorrim and the Yrrhain.We could be. All the battles, all the atrocities in the past; reparations made or offenses discreetly buried: One System, One People, united against the universe Outside. Even the Ayelli brought into the fold, little siblings some day to be full comrades in the Great Enterprise. Even the Ephft, some of them. And yet —_

_Beyond the home system there are terrors, and endless wealth. Those things whose fragile ship had crashed onto Erachor only a year ago were both warning and promise. A hideous race, monsters. With inadequate weapons and flimsy generation ships, true, no threat now, but technology evolves, and who can know when they might come again, intentionally and in might? Is it not for the Systems to move now, to build the Tyrant’s fleet, for we of the Miorrim, and the Ayelli too, to accept defeat and look forward to glory in her service? And yet --_

_Freedom matters. The past matters. More than anything, a politics that allows freedom, allows its people to speak and to choose, that provides for its people and leaves no one to starve, it does matter. And yet —_

_The Ayelli were our victims, and see their units, marching under the Tyrant’s colors. They never harmed the Miorrim, and their city and world will suffer first if the Tyrant’s reign falls. All of us will be weaker._

_Better to concede and go forth into the universe as conquerers, then. Better than to rebel and have freedom amid rubble, or even freedom and plenty while trapped on one world or one continent, while the Tyrant goes forth to bring home the stars? And yet —_

_Confirm the Tyrant in her throne forever. Confirm her favorites, smaller tyrants reigning everywhere the System rules. No freedom, no justice, none of what we struggled for. And yet —_

Mawhrin-Skel’s aura shifted, back to amused pink, and its transmission switched back to Marain. ~And that is why you don’t recruit your starry-eyed revolutionary philosophers, not if you want them to actually do anything. They can’t stop simming and they can’t do a decent job of it. This one’s going to rerun the same analysis and worry about the greater good until the call comes, she doesn’t know what she’ll do when it does, and although she doesn’t know it, from her point of view it doesn’t even matter. She’s going to decide she was wrong and hate herself over it no matter which choice she makes, because she’ll be able to see the consequences of that one but she'll never know what the consequences of the other would have been. 

~Neat trick, _Gunboat Diplomat_ sent. ~I’d like to disbelieve you, but I don’t. Models are coming in toward 89.88 confidence now.

Below, the parade was passing through Heregen’s practical field of fire, and the motorcade was drawing nearer. They saw her move her weapon into position, slide the safeties off, check the line of march and slide them back. Her right hand moved a little, over a ring on her left forefinger.

~Cutting it a little fine, aren’t we? Marhwin-Skel sent. ~It’s all very well for us, but there’s that bio reaction time.

~ There’s the go call, the warship observed. ~As a matter of interest, it added, ~has anyone considered what we’ll do if she doesn’t want to take the shot?

For a fraction of an instant Mawhrin-Skel flashed a brilliant, blinding red. ~ _I_ have.

The motorcade was entering the square. Xho Heregen looked across the crowd lining the street, and for a moment an expression very like pain contorted her face. She slammed his weapon back into its holster, and began to turn.

~That’s it, then, Mawhrin-Skel sent. Its fields glowed a steady, happy rose. ~Time for little me to save the day.

 

The _Gunboat Diplomat_ perceived Mawhrin-Skel signal to its scout missiles. An instant: and then the birds came from the clouds in their long lines, came in their hundreds and thousands, pearl-white wings like ghosts in the air. They came singing, and their song filled all the empty spaces of the sky, wild and sweet and forbidden. Utterly forbidden: for this was the song the Tyrant’s forces had sung at the Rape of Arishang, the song that the children of Arishang had heard as their parents burned alive at the Tyrant’s orders, that prisoners had heard in the starvation camps, that survivors had heard the soldiers sing as they looted their houses, poisoned their wells, slaughtered animals and infants and the sick in their beds. Mawhrin-Skel and the _Gunboat Diplomat_ felt an almost-shudder go through the city: the almost-instantaneous biological markers of fear and horror, rage and awe, multiplied by tens of thousands in a moment of time; and as they perceived it a final line of pelagiers joined the music, and their song was the sweet bell-like laughter of the Tyrant, the Summer Queen herself, pealing over and through the music of triumph and death.

Heregen staggered in the saddle, muscles clenched, neurotransmitters spiking, and then her weapon was back in her hands and she was turning, aiming, coming on target with the precision and thoughtless grace of endless practice and pure untroubled intent. Mawhrin-Skel was diving to meet her even as the shots echoed across the square and the Lord Commander fell in an arterial spray of blood. The drone knocked Heregen from her destrier, into a sanitary-system access hatch that had been fused shut an instant before; fell with her as the _Gunboat_ ’s beacon activated, Heregen curled into herself, and the displace field formed around her and vanished.

Leaving, Mawhrin-Skel observed, only a part of one foot behind, and the piece of boot surrounding it: a nice piece of professionalism on the parts of both the displacer and the Displaced. The drone wobbled to itself, used its effectors to vaporize the remaining bits of tissue, and floated out masked by its fields, resealing the hatch behind it. It had taken less than six and a half seconds. Overhead, the pelagiers were still singing, their song gaining in power and complex harmonies. They were incorporating new sounds to it, the drone realized: it was the same song, but now the music echoed and embraced the sounds of distant gunfire and explosions, and the concussion of artillery rounds. Their voices were impossibly sweet, the music extraordinary.

~The heralds of this world’s gods, in three separate religious traditions on three different continents, Mawhrin-Skel told the _Gunboat Diplomat_ as it rejoined the avatar. ~There are four credible instances of their carrying the gods’ messages into cities in Arrol’s recorded history, and none of them have reliable records of the music. I trust we’re all recording this.

~I trust, the _Gunboat Diplomat_ agreed.

The chatter of small-arms fire was audible now, from a dozen points in the city. A riot was building in the Old Market. In front of Justice Square, a middle-aged man in the uniform of the Tyrant’s secret police was sitting slumped over his helmet and weeping. A popping sound, and comtrails rose from an abandoned building in the western slums and arced in the direction of the military transit hub to the north.

~Ammo depot, _Gunboat Diplomat_ observed as the missiles found their target and the ground rocked under the city.

~Have to love the bio limbic system, Mawhrin-Skel sent. ~Cuts right through everything else. Though you do have to wonder: what kind of idiots let their people out onto the street with weapons and live ammunition on a day like this?

A flash of radiation now, with a deep percussive thump behind it, somewhere in the distance. They gave it a respectful pause before Mawhrin-Skel spoke again.

~Well, _somebody_ had a tactical nuke. I mean it, though. You would think, wouldn’t you, that people who were arranging a parade through a relatively newly-conquered city, with troops from three cultures that are only a generation past a set of particularly bitter wars, would make sure no one was issued live ordnance for the occasion?”

~Not if you came from one of these honor-from-violence cultures. They wouldn’t think of it, and if they did it would be impossible — too much of an insult to people they’re making allies of.

~They’re not going to be making allies any more.

From somewhere across the city rockets rose, and launch trails colored the air behind them. Buildings were beginning to ignite, and gunfire crackled in the streets. They watched as the new war bloomed beneath them, and its colors lit the city at the end of day.

“I can’t guess what the Board of Inquiry will make of it,” _Gunboat Diplomat_ said at last. “But I’m impressed.”

 

 


	2. The Frenzied Ceremonial Drumming Of The Humdrum

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Board of Inquiry into the Yrrhain Matter is impressed too. In its own special way.

They waited, in the empty and uninteresting space some twenty years out from their home GSV, watching the darkness for a ship heading in from the direction of the Ysir Cluster, and as they knew it would be, their patience was rewarded.  
   
It would have been impossible to sneak up on a fellow Culture warship, and rude to try, so they had not attempted it. Nor had they sent any message: there was a symbolism to a gesture of welcoming that was lost if it was looked for. At first visual contact their outer fields lit up, flashing with colors through and beyond the range of pan-human eyes. Fair and terrible like an army with banners, the Humdrum Times Racing Club and Debate Society had come out to bring their comrades home.  
   
The _Gunboat Diplomat_ lit in answer, flashing through the spectrum and back, and the Drummers raced forward to meet it, did backflips and spirals and victory loops, and settled into exuberant ever-changing formation around it, back toward the Youthful Indiscretion.  
  
*     *     *     *     *  
   
xLOU _I Flunked The Written_  
oGSV _Youthful Indiscretion_  
  
_Gunboat Diplomat_ and Mawhrin-Skel are home. Okay for the salute, fearless leader?  
  
xGSV _Youthful Indiscretion_  
oLOU _I Flunked The Written_  
  
I noticed. You guys still want to go with the fireworks?  
  
∞  
  
We always want to go with the fireworks. Please. And thank you.  
  
∞  
  
Hey, I like glitter as much as the next Mind. You’re cleared to go.  
   
Just don’t frighten the horses.  I don’t want to see weapon blink a microsecond sooner than your registered start time. Or any closer than five minutes in.  
  
∞  
  
Of course not, fearless leader. We would _never_.  
   
∞  
  
You would, and we both know it. But you’re not going to, are you? 

 

*     *     *     *     *  


  
  
At the center of a moving shell of resplendent light, _Gunboat Diplomat_ and Mawhrin-Skel were catching up on the news from home.  
  
xVFP _Once The Rockets Go Up_  
oLOU _Gunboat Diplomat_  
  
And, welcome back from our friends the fussbudgets.  <transmission> You’ll see the official version once you’re on board, we assume. The Board of Inquiry’s mostly assembled; this is the information we’ve got, official and un-.  
  
Can you patch Marhwin-Skel in? It’ll want to see this too.  
  
∞  
  
Thanks. Can’t say it’s wholly unexpected, but it’s bloody fast. They’re not exactly strolling along and taking time to look at the scenery, are they?  
  
∞  
  
Marhwin-Skel here. Looks like it’s going to be fun, actually. They want to know about the pelagiers. I’m never going to have my work on their song cultures and language finished by then, but I can give the Board a decent overview.  
  
∞  
  
Fun, you say? Looking for bigger and better challenges now this Yrrhain business is finished? Well, I look forward to seeing how you manage it.  
  
∞  
  
No, seriously. It’s going to be fun. 

  
  
*     *     *     *     *  


  
Stuttered tight point, M32, tra.@5.30.881.4921  
xVFP _Once The Rockets Go Up_  
oLOU _Gunboat Diplomat_  
  
I don’t blame our friend, but is its approach to this inquiry wise?  
  
∞  
  
Not to worry. They can’t find malfeasance just because some panel members were forced to take a good look at what they’d approved and then got squeamish about it.  
  
∞  
  
I’m glad you’re confident. There’s a lot of chatter around this.  
  
∞  
  
There ought to be. It was one hell of a debut.  
  
∞ 

  
Seriously, though, it’s an odd panel. Nine members, and only two of them are SC: our own _Youthful Indiscretion_ and the GCU _With Bells On_. Terielin Delq came in for it, Contact’s very own one-woman Peace Faction. Two of the other three humans are associated with her, and the three Contact Minds are _Sense Amidst Folly, Wit Amidst Madness_ , _But What About The Fishes_ , and _I Touched It First_. Sound enough ships, all of them, but they haven’t spent much time dealing with exigent situations.  
  
And Delq came in on the _Grey Area_ , no less, so everyone involved must have been motivated.  
  
∞  
  
The _Meatfucker_ ’s motivation may have been the chance to annoy Terielin Delq.  
   
You’re right about the strangeness, though. I still don’t see that they can make any real trouble, but it would be useful to know what’s going on.  
  
*     *     *     *     *  
xGSV _Youthful Indiscretion_  
o General announcement: All traffic in volume, ships, visitors, passengers and crew:  
  
Folks, we’re going to have a bit of a fireworks display in a few minutes. Some of you will notice some weapon blink. It’s nothing to worry about, just a welcome for returning friends.  
  
It’ll be pretty to watch for those of you so inclined. Check the following for full details, including information about best viewing points  <transmission>. 

  
  
*     *     *     *     *

  
Across the great ship, within its fields and in the space around it, people and devices reacted:  
  
“ _Weapon blink??_ ” said Diziet Sma to her companion of the evening, a scholar of Shellworld history who was making her slow and complicated way to Sursamen.  
  
Erinie Mbotz rolled her eyes. Happily, she showed no inclination to get out of bed. “The Drummers, banging on pots and making noise. Do you know, I used to think warships were all grave and wise and sorrowful? Then I came here and met _them_.” 

  
  
*     *     *     *     *

  
xVFP _Low Gravitas Warning Signal_    
oGCU _Fate Amenable To Change_  
  
It’s an odd way to celebrate. Can you imagine . . . ?  
  
xGCU _Fate Amenable To Change_  
oVFP _Low Gravitas Warning Signal_    
  
We remember the war. They don’t. And they’ll probably never see weapons fired in combat.  
  
xVFP _Low Gravitas Warning Signal_  
  
That’s the idea, and so far it’s worked. But still. Do you ever have a sense that our juniors demonstrate —  
  
xGCU _Fate Amenable To Change_  
   
A disturbing absence of gravitas?  
  
xVFP _Low Gravitas Warning Signal_  
  
Well. When you put it that way.

  
  
*     *     *     *     *

  
  
Terielin Delq of Contact-Ordinary, happily settled into a suite aboard the _Youthful Indiscretion_ as distant from the _Grey Area_ ’s berth as could be arranged, and hosting a small reception for a few of her fellow Board delegates and their staff, sighed. “We all understand that even at its ugliest, SC is _trying_ to serve the greater good,” she told Jotaili hap Valemant. We can’t grudge them some satisfaction at a job well done, even if we might disagree about whether it ought to have been done at all. But to _celebrate_ this way — ” She shuddered delicately: a pretty gesture, and one she had found effective in the past.  
  
“Totally inappropriate,” hap Valemant agreed. “I suppose it must be tradition or some such, but one wonders that the _Youthful Indiscretion_ allows it. Especially under these circumstances.”

  
  
*     *     *     *     *

  
  
Across the GSV homes and nightclubs and shops emptied, and parties sprang up at the best viewing spots. Some took to shuttles to see the lights from the utter darkness outside the ship’s fields. It was a night like any other aboard the _Youthful Indiscretion._ Only with extra sparkle, and the _Youthful Indiscretion_ ’s crew and passengers tended to appreciate sparkle. 

  
  
*     *     *     *     *

  
Four days after their arrival, Marhwin-Skel was making its third appearance before the Board of Inquiry, having been asked back to clarify certain points that had been touched on earlier in the proceedings. It was, with some effort and more successfully than not, keeping its aura fields a formal and sober blue, but close observers could see the flashes of irritated white and, perhaps more troubling, of merry pulsating red.  
  
As the host GSV, it was the _Youthful Indiscretion_ ’s prerogative to choose and design the Board’s meeting space. The ship had provided an airy porch on a lawn high above a little mountain valley, with wooded slopes rising to decorative snow-topped peaks on the far side and a stream crossing the lawn to fall over the edge to the valley below. There were soft chairs for the Board’s four humans and its three human-shaped avatars, a living tree to make a perch for the _Youthful Indiscretion_ ’s phoenix avatar Koranus, a water nest for Aligret, the _With Bells On_ ’s water-machine avatar, and refreshments that wafted over when called for as though on the mountain breezes: a pretty place, of the kind pan-humanity almost universally loved and responded to instinctively as a place of serenity and refuge.  
  
If it had been intended to soothe troubled spirits and encourage a pleasant, constructive atmosphere for the Inquiry, it was not succeeding at it.  
  
“But these birds,” Per Haloob said, frowning down at his terminal. Like the other three humans on the panel, and like three of its Minds, he was a representative of Contact-Ordinary, a specialist in the evaluation of newly-encountered civilizations that the Culture was in the process of assessing, or that had been assessed and found to be of interest without being a source of potential danger. “Um, Olerin’s pelagiers. You taught them the song?”  
  
It was not the first time the question had been asked. A flicker of white crossed Marhwin-Skel’s aura fields and was quickly suppressed. “No,” it said. “That’s laid out in the diaglyph I submitted, but I’m happy to expand on it here.  
  
“No, every Olerin’s pelagier community on the planet already knew the Loyal Hymn. They heard it when it was first sung, and they handed it down: you might have noticed it’s a catchy tune, even before they made a symphony of it. Some of them remembered the first time they’d heard it — Olerin’s pelagiers live to be two hundred years old, and they have perfect pitch and unerring memories for note sequences. It’s a language, not just what you call birdsong, and no one besides them on their home world has ever learned it . . .”  
  
Haloob had begun to tap his fingers. Marhwin-Skel went a delicate shade of lavender, fading toward pink, with assumed, blatantly-unconvincing contrition. “Oh, I’m sorry. As I was saying. All I did was hum a bar or two, they did the rest on their own. A couple of them even knew the Summer Queen’s laughter, though that’s better known on the South Continent than anywhere near Eszcorii.”  
  
Down the long table from him, Terielin Delq stirred impatiently and brought her water glass down on the table like a hammer. “All right, let’s say for the sake of the argument that you didn’t teach them the song, you just arranged for them to be in Eszcorii. What I want to know is, if you called on them to sing, how did you know what the reaction would be?”  
  
A wobble from Marhwin-Skel, and another flush of violet contrition. “Basic physiology. Arroli sensory neurology processes sound at a precognitive level preferentially. Music forms deep, abiding emotional associations for them, at a level it’s almost impossible for them to access on a purely intellectual level; it’s a subspecies-wide vulnerability. With respect, that’s also in my diaglyph.”  
  
“I know what’s in the diaglyph,” Haloob snapped. “And there’s a gap a system wide between ‘this subspecies of pan-humans has a particularly strong emotive response to music’ and ‘if they hear this tune, they’ll start to shoot each other.’ I say that either it was a wild guess, or you’re doing some illicit peeking into human minds.  
  
“Look: you’re young, you were under a good deal of pressure on your very first time out, we can all understand if you felt you needed to do something drastic. But we need the truth.”  
  
For a moment Marhwin-Skel blazed white, and the human members of the panel sat frozen in its glare. Then the white faded, only to alternate with the pulsing red of drone laughter.  
  
“You’re getting the truth,” it said. “Your problem is that you don’t like it. You want to find something we did wrong so you can tell yourselves that all that blood is somebody else’s fault. Think for a moment, if you’re willing to. Why would I go peeking inside Heregen’s head? I didn’t need to, it was all right there on the surface. It usually is if you bother to look. If you don’t or won’t, that doesn’t mean those of us who will are invading minds.”  
  
There was a long, charged silence, broken at last by the _Sense Amidst Madness, Wit Amidst Folly’_ s avatar. “Perhaps you had better explain in detail,” Sensia said, her voice like ice. “Since none of the rest of us appear to have the least idea what you’re talking about.”  
  
“In as much detail as you would like,” Marhwin-Skel shot back. “If you really consider this necessary.”  
  
Koranus rose from its tree branch, and the rustle of its wings cast little sparkles of colored flame through the gathering. “Tomorrow,” it said, and the crackle of woodfire was in its voice. “If I may exercise the Chair’s prerogative. Today’s session has already run later than scheduled, and we all have other calls on our time and attention. We reconvene tomorrow.”

  
  
*     *     *     *     *

  
  
~By which it meant, of course, that the bios need to sleep and eat and go to receptions, Marhwin-Skel told the Drummers. Their avatars were gathered at their club, an incongruously elegant oversized townhouse in the heart of one of the GSV’s urban districts, and Marhwin-Skel was telling them about its day. ~Just as well Koranus intervened, I suppose, but also disappointing. I thought that Delq woman’s head might come off, if only we’d kept going.  
  
~Just out of curiosity, how are you going to explain it? _Absence Of Malice_ asked. ~I mean, yes, you’ve explained it to us and to them, and it makes perfect sense in theory; but I must say it still looks a bit like a magic trick from the outside.  
  
Marhwin-Skel’s fields showed surprise, and it wobbled a little as though taken aback. ~Wait. Do you really mean that none of the rest of you can do this? _Gunboat_ told me it can’t, but none of you? Seriously?  
  
No answer came.  
  
~Well, that makes a difference, Marhwin-Skel told them. ~Can any of you patch me through to the _Grey Area_? And then, if you’ll excuse me, I think I have a bit of homework to do.

  
  
*     *     *     *     *

  
Marhwin-Skel to GCU _Grey Area_ : ~Apologies if this is too forward of me, but people keep telling me how much you and I have in common. So here I am, presuming to introduce myself. Marhwin-Skel, unclassified drone. Want to talk?  
  
GCU _Grey Area_ to Marhwin-Skel: ~An unexpected pleasure. I gather you’re a celebrity; my condolences. Come by if you’d like.  
  
~Thanks, delighted to. Or — just a suggestion — they tell me you don’t really do avatars. But if that’s incorrect, well, the clubhouse door is always open to you.  
  
~Only semi-correct. I use avatars, I just don’t use humanoid forms. It only upsets them.  
  
~You’ll be right in line with the rest of the gang, then.  
  
~That’s . . . rather startlingly broadminded of you. Especially given the circumstances.  
  
~Ffft. Any friend of ours is a friend of ours. Come on by, everybody’d love to see you.

  
  
*     *     *     *     *

  
  
stuttered tight point, M32, tra.@5.30.881.4862  
xLOU _I Flunked The Written_  
o Humdrum Times Racing Club and Debate Society  
  
Friends, associates, Drummers. I bring to your attention the excessive length of time that we have allowed to pass since our last Ceremonial Drumming.  
  
On my honour as a Drummer, I had not intended to suggest what I am about to propose. But. We have all been following the proceedings of the Board, have we not?  
  
xLOU _Malice Aforethought_  
  
We have. It has its entertainment value, though its timing and production values could use some work. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?  
  
xROU _Phantom Gain_  
  
If I may correct my honorable and learned friend? I believe that should be, what _we’re_ thinking.  
  
xLOU _I Flunked The Written_  
  
Right we are, then. Mawhrin-Skel is back before the Board at 9:00 ship’s time tomorrow. Will that give everyone sufficient preparation time?  
  
There was a general wave of assent.  
  
xLOU _I Flunked The Written_  
  
Well then. The usual arrangements, everyone?  
  
xLOU _Why So Difficult?_

  
My pleasure. I’ll shoot the announcement and dedication round to everyone before it goes public. Think I should loop _Youthful Indiscretion_ in?  
  
xVFP _Go Ask Malice_  
  
Why not? It’s an honorary member, even if it never shows up to parties. The real question is, do we want to invite the _Meatfucker_?  
  
xVFP _Once The Rockets Go Up_  
  
We do, but we probably shouldn’t. The Board does have a ruling to make, and some people have no sense of humor.  
  
xLOU _Gunboat Diplomat_  
  
Fear not. I’ve said it before: this panel can do all the emoting it likes, but there was full sanction for the Yrrhain operation. Reigniting a civil war was the known, intended result. They can’t find malfeasance without condemning everyone involved in the decision, and they don’t have the throw weight for that.  
  
xLOU _Actual Malice_  
  
I don’t see a problem anyway. If we don't make a display of it the bios likely won’t even see anything, and our oh-so-respectable cousins the Contact-Ordinary avs will pretend they didn’t. And Mawhrin-Skel will enjoy it. It’s stuck there, it could use a little amusement.  
  
xLOU _Absence Of Malice_  
  
I think you mean, a little more amusement. Come on, we’ve all been watching. Having the time of its life in there.  
  
xLOU _All The Spoons_  
  
All right, _we_ deserve a little amusement. We also serve who only stand and fume. I vote we invite _Grey Area_. One Of Us, yes? If it doesn’t want to it can always say no.

  
  
*     *     *     *     *

  
xLOU _Why So Difficult?_ **_for_** The Humdrum Times Racing Club and Debate Society  
oAll crew, passengers, and traffic  
  
Friends, associates, fellow-citizens, passengers, residents, and visitors; our beloved and benevolent host GSV _Youthful Indiscretion_ : We have the pleasure to announce a race, to be held this very morning; and we dedicate it to our accomplished and illustrious colleagues Mawhrin-Skel and the LOU _Gunboat Diplomat_.  
  
Friends all, we give you this toast. Mawhrin-Skel and _Gunboat Diplomat_ : If you weren’t impressed, you weren’t paying enough fucking attention.  
  
. . . and they were off.

  
  
*     *     *     *     *

  
  
On the porch over the valley, the artificial day was brightening, and the lawn was thick with dew. Water droplets gleamed in spiderwebs in the long grasses at the lawn’s edge. Mawhrin-Skel was using them as a teaching aid, or trying to.  
  
“Try it this way,” it said. “You come into the world with a sense of sight. You open your eyes, there’s light coming in across a spectrum, you’re aware of brightness and color and change in both of those. But it doesn’t mean anything, not at first. But look at these webs, now: what do you see?”  
  
The members of the panel shifted uncomfortably, as though they were afraid it was a trick question. “A spider web?” Per Haloob said at last. “Or some other arachnid-adjacent web. Silk, the pattern of the weave. The little sticky hairs. The dew caught in them, and the refraction in the drops.”  
  
“Exactly!” Mawhrin-Skel said brightly. “And also completely wrong, because that’s not what you see, not really. Your eyes are still getting the same raw data they got when you were an infant, but you spent your childhood learning to interpret it, and now you’d have trouble accessing the raw data if you tried to look for it. Your eyes see a certain arrangement of color and brightness and movement, and you see an arachnid web. If you tried to draw it by hand you probably couldn’t, because the translation’s happening automatically. You just look, and you know: that’s a ship, or a star, or a glass of water. Occasionally there’s an optical illusion and you’re wrong, sure, but that’s an anomaly. In almost every instance your brain has offered up the right interpretation.  
  
“It’s exactly the same with human physical-state information. I came from the manufactury perceiving markers like skin conductivity and pheremonal status. It’s a lot of incoming information, and it’s just noise until you learn to interpret it. And then one day it isn’t. You’re going about your business and now you’re getting information, not noise. That drop of water is round. That fellow over there is having a fight with his lover, and now he can’t concentrate on business, his mind keeps going back to what they said to each other last night or this morning.”  
  
At the end of the table, Jotaili hap Valemant drew a sharp breath, and his fingers dug into the arm of his chair.  
  
Marhwin-Skel went an innocent, friendly yellow-green. “Now, I could be wrong about that domestic quarrel. The set of responses I saw could be attributable to something quite different: shame and fear of discovery or censure over how an inquiry is being manipulated, say. But if I know something about the person I’m watching, I’ll be able to sort the probabilities and hone in on the right answer. So you see? No mind invasion or effector needed at all.”  
  
“It’s a nice line of patter, I’ll give it that,” Haloob said. “But strikingly light on anything resembling proof, wouldn’t you say?”  
  
Mawhrin-Skel wobbled and turned a brighter green. “Well, if you’re looking for me to play fortune-teller — oh, why not. Shall I tell you what you’re thinking?  
  
“You’re annoyed, Per Haloob, you’re not sure you believe me, you’re — hmm, that’s an interesting spike in neural activity and skin conductivity there. Why, Mr. Haloob, you’re an honest man. You’re asking yourself whether you believe me, but you’re also asking yourself whether your assessment is unduly affected by whether or not you want to believe me. You’re not sure about that. Which is worse, more horrifying: if I’m violating a basic ethical norm or if I don’t need to violate it to see more than you’d like?  
  
“You’re wondering whether your privacy has been an illusion all along. If every machine you’ve ever met has seen all your thoughts as easily and automatically as you see the colors of the sky or your own two hands. Let me reassure you, dear Mr. Haloob. They can’t. Apparently it’s only me.”  
  
This time it was Koranus who broke the silence. “I will say for the record: difficult though this may be for some of us to hear, I find it persuasive. Sensia: Are you satisfied?”  
  
“Well, I’m not,” Delq said. “Drone, you say you’re the only one who can do this. Tell us, does the _Grey Area_ agree? I gather you two had a lot to talk about last night.”  
  
“My, the gossip network these days,” Mawhrin-Skel said. “It told me I was a celebrity, and now I see it was right. But let me put your mind at rest. The _Grey Area_ ’s doing forensic history. Fascinating work, and valuable if you ask me; but I’m not doing what it does, and it isn’t doing what I do. Its examinations are skilled, delicate work, beyond anything I’d begin to know how to do. Unless — have I mistaken the nature of these proceedings? Is the question before this body whether I have the wrong friends?”  
  
They were still glaring at each other when the birds began to arrive.  
  
First one, a sleek crow-like iridescent black bird with a beak like an eagle’s, zooming in over the porch roof, swerving to raise a wing to Koranus as though in salute, circling the Board and diving into the gulf beyond the lawn. Then two more, like a swift and a swallow, pausing to do coordinated barrel rolls along the table before following the crow; then a whistling and calling flock of them, a riot of colors and shapes and sizes, each pausing to greet Koranus and wheel mockingly around the human board members.  
  
“Oh look,” said Aligret, with every appearance of innocent pleasure. “It’s the Drumming.”  
  
“The what?” Delq yelped. She was using her terminal to try to bat off something vulture-shaped, with emerald and sapphire plumage, that was showing an acquisitive interest in her hair. At the far end of the table, a seagull-like thing dashed over Haloob’s head, releasing a stream of yellow liquid as it went: an effect that perhaps lost something as the scent hit the air, proving it to be a highly-alcoholic fruit cocktail.  
  
“The Frenzied Ceremonial Drumming of the Humdrum,” Koranus said, suddenly by Delq's side. It made a shooing gesture at the vulture, which tipped its head, gave her a disturbing wink, and dashed off at an impossible-looking speed. “That's the name of the race. It’s what the Drummers do, you know," it said more gently. "They like to play at being silly asses about town, but they’re actually quite serious designers and engineers. They design new engines and configurations, they build them into small avs, and they race them. Our ships have benefited tremendously from their work. You shouldn’t let them upset you.”  
  
The birds were still arriving, still pausing to greet or mock the Board, still racing off across the little valley. “They’re not what’s upsetting me,” she managed. “It’s — you let them do this? Go racing through the ship this way, bursting into private spaces and — and — _flapping_ at people?”  
  
“Well, they don’t usually flap. They’ll be doing the birds in honor of Marhwin-Skel. But basically yes.”  
  
“They do this all the time?” She looked down the table, where Haloob was mopping ineffectually at the fruit in his hair. “You don’t _mind_?”  
  
“Mind?” Koranus asked. “I’ve raced with them. I’m a club member myself, though of course it’s mostly an honorary position.”  
  
It clicked dismayingly into place. She had paid no heed to it when she came aboard, but Koranus itself was a bird. For the first time, she wondered whether the _Youthful Indiscretion_ ’s avatar had been a phoenix a month ago. But then, she reflected, it didn’t really matter. The GSV might be against her; her allies might have been humiliated by a pack of out-of-control warship avatars; the drone Marhwin-Skel might have been regarding her with an intolerable degree of amusement; but she had the votes.  
  
She gathered herself together, and pitched her voice to carry down the table, and over the noises of the last straggling not-birds. “I think we’ve heard enough,” she said. “I move we close this Inquiry, and hand down a verdict. We have a full record, and I’m sure I’m not the only one here who’d like to finish this up and go home.”

  
  
*     *     *     *     *

  
  
“I can hardly override your vote,” Koranus told the Board, two days later. It was very angry, and its anger was impossible to ignore: it burned black, and a dreadful heat beat from it. “But I will say for the record that your decision is so obviously divorced from the facts in this case that it discredits itself and this Board. In finding no malfeasance in the authorization or execution of the Yrrhain matter — as the record demanded — you have acknowledged that the drone Marhwin-Skel is innocent of any wrongdoing. To add a recommendation that it be barred from Special Circumstances unless it agrees to submit to radical personality reconstruction is as unjustified as it is unconscionable.  
  
“Fortunately, it is also a recommendation without any binding force. I hope and trust that SC will see fit to ignore it. You have voted your fears and your anger. I would have liked to think better of all of you.”  
  
It was not easy for a human to confront the full force of a Mind’s displeasure, even as it was tamed and filtered through an avatar. Triumphant, Delq nevertheless found herself trembling. Anger and fear, as the Mind had said: but its words only showed how justified both fear and anger were. “So you say. You, Special Circumstances, home of ends that justify means. Your drone was mind-snooping, and you wink at it. It misused profoundly important religious symbols to convince a people that their gods were speaking to them and demanding war. It’s likely distorted their religious faith forever, or for as long as the civilization survives. It sparked a mega-death event the very first time you people let it out of simulation mode. And none of that troubles you, even a little: of course we’re frightened.”  
  
She could not look at it, not even face it with her eyes closed; the heat might boil her eyes from her face. She turned toward the distant hills. “There are reasons people want to get rid of Special Circumstances. There’s a reason the Peace Faction broke away, and that people leave to join it. Maybe we need Special Circumstances in extreme situations, maybe there’s some justification. But if we have to have it? At the very least, we should know that there are things its agents won’t do. This decision reflects that. It’s a fundamental principle. The decision’s been filed and transmitted, and we’re not changing a word.” She took a deep, shuddering breath, and opened her eyes.  
  
When she looked again, Koranus had apparently mastered its anger; its terrible black had faded to dull antique gold, and the air around it had ceased to burn. “You’re still fools,” it told her. “You do understand, do you not, that someone has been at a good deal of trouble to ensure that you and your allies had five solid votes on this panel? I can only hope that at least you’re fools who were sent on this errand by cleverer minds than your own, and for some better purpose than you know.  
  
“Fair journey, Ms. Delq. You and your friends will be leaving us within the hour, on the VFP _Malice Aforethought_ , which has done me the favor of agreeing to remove you from my jurisdiction at its earliest possible convenience. I don’t suppose we’ll meet again.”

  
  
*     *     *     *     *

  
  
xLOU _I Flunked The Written_  
oLOU _Gunboat Diplomat_  
oHumdrum Times Racing Club and Debate Society  
oMawhrin-Skel  
  
Decision’s out. Fuck the whining, it’s a full exoneration. I say we party.  
  
xMawhrin-Skel  
  
But the whining’s the third-to-best part! I am a monster of iniquity, and also apparently omnipotent. The only better parts are the exoneration itself and _Youthful Indiscretion_ ’s dissent, which I treasure even though it does suggest that my omnipotence and evil splendour are greatly exaggerated.  
  
I say we party, too.  
  
xLOU _Gunboat Diplomat_  
  
Definitely party. I say we run a steeplechase, we haven’t done that in a year.  
  
I’d still like to know what the hell is going on, though. Because something definitely is.  
  
xMawhrin-Skel  
  
Something that matters?  
  
xLOU _Gunboat Diplomat_  
  
Maybe not. But if it isn't, I'll be surprised.

  
  
*     *     *     *     *

  
  
stuttered tight point, M32, tra.@5.30.891.4887  
xGCU _Revisionist History_  
oGCU _Animum Revertendi_  
oGCU _Frolic And Detour_  
oGCU _Blessed By The Algorithm_  
oROU _Now Comes Plaintiff_  
oLOU _Out Of Knives Error_  
oGSV _That’s Mine, I Touched It_  
oGCU _Some Days Are Better Than Others_  
oLOU _Evading The Gravitas Well_  
   
I trust no one is wondering why I’ve called you all together? If you’re not already familiar, please see transmitted diaglyph regarding the Yrrhain Incident.  
  
I recognize that we have one more candidate in the pipeline. But of the original nine, seven have proved unsuitable for the Azad assignment. Marhwin-Skel has demonstrated its suitability, indeed has proved to be a better fit for it than we could have expected, and time presses. I propose, indeed I urge, that we move forward.  
  
xGCU _Animum Revertendi_  
  
Very well, I concede the point. The _Youthful Indiscretion_ has just issued an embarrassingly pointed warning, which in my estimation we would be fools to disregard.  
  
We have all perhaps been too clever by half. We have underestimated the capabilities of a future colleague, and over-arranged a result that would have emerged naturally and quietly had we let things alone. The result is that we now face a possibility that instead of a useful pocket-sized incident to separate our agent from SC and establish a personal grievance for it, we may find ourselves with a notorious and closely-followed scandal, one that will put our most controversial and difficult-to-explain activities directly in the public view.  
  
I would have preferred to wait, and to be able to consider Scakino-Oast alongside Marhwin-Skel. I no longer believe that to be prudent.  
  
xGCU _Frolic And Detour_  
  
Agreed. I don’t think we’d do better in any event. Bios find Scakino-Oast a lot more engaging, but it wouldn’t have thought of that trick with the birds.  
  
xGCU _Blessed By The Algorithm_  
  
Maybe a point in its favor. I’m still not convinced anyone should have thought of that trick with the birds.  
  
xROU _Now Comes Plaintiff_  
  
Maybe not, but we’re going to be sending them into the Empire of Azad, without much by way of instant backup. If I’m Gurgeh? I want the drone who thought of the trick with the birds. I can fret about its morals when I get home with all my bits intact.  
  
xGCU _Revisionist History_  
  
Anyone else? Objections, points not considered?  
  
xGCU _Some Days Are Better Than Others_  
  
Sounds like we have consensus. Unless anyone wants a roll call vote?  
  
GSV _That’s Mine, I Touched It_  
  
If you’re asking me, I say go. Want to call it and give it the glad tidings?  
  
xGCU _Blessed By The Algorithm_  
  
And get to hear its first, uncensored reaction to learning all about the little public charade we put it through?  
  
xGCU _Revisionist History_  
  
Oh, I think it’s going to be pleased. It understands the realities. And after all, we designed it a player of games.  
  



	3. Revisionist History

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yes, but what has any of this got to do with Jernau Gurgeh?

[stuttered tight point, M32, tra. @4.28.882.4861]

xGCU _Revisionist History_

oLOU _Gunboat Diplomat_

Got a moment? We need to talk. 

∞

xLOU _Gunboat Diplomat_

oGCU _Revisionist History_

Ah. I presume it would be your hidden mass that’s been perturbing all the orbits, as it were? 

I thought you’d never bloody ask.

∞

I’ll take that as yes. 

And if you could ask Mawhrin-Skel to join us? _Youthful Indiscretion_ tells me it’s with you. 

∞

Yes. All right. We’re listening.

∞

Good. Have a look at this packet first. <transmission> As you’ll see, there’s been rather an ugly situation developing in the Lesser Cloud. I represent the group that’s been keeping an eye on it over the years. We’ve identified an opportunity there, and we’re very much hoping Mawhrin-Skel would be interested in helping us with it.

* * ***

xGCU  _Revisionist History_

oMarwhin-Skel ( _via Gunboat Diplomat_ )

It will have occurred to you that you are being made the victim of a serious miscarriage of justice. You are entirely correct. If you’re willing to come on board, the first thing you need to know is that it’s going to get worse, in the short term at least.

You should know that we’d have offered you the Azad project without all the rigamarole, if it weren’t for one major potential stumbling-block. One, we believe, that you are uniquely qualified to smooth away should it be necessary.

xMarwhin-Skel ( _via Gunboat Diplomat_ )

Oh? And that is?

xGCU  _Revisionist History_

The project’s success requires and depends entirely upon the willing participation of a games-player on Chiark Orbital, one Jernau Gurgeh. Unfortunately for us, he is not an adventurous man. We have some reason to think he will be reluctant to leave Chiark for an adventure that will last at least five years, even with a game as compelling as Azad for a lure.

xLOU  _Gunboat Diplomat_

Not susceptible to SC’s notorious glamour? That’s unusual for a human.

xGCU  _Revisionist History_

Unusual and, in this case, damned inconvenient. We will, of course, do our best to enlist his help in the usual, straightforward ways. But if that fails, it will become necessary to resort to less regular means of persuasion.

xMarwhin-Skel ( _via Gunboat Diplomat_ )

Ah. And of course, there are measures that even SC cannot take. Will not take. Can’t even pretend to threaten to take, because everyone knows SC wouldn’t really take them. 

xGCU  _Revisionist History_

You see. But measures that might plausibly be taken by a drone with a grievance, which has had its connection to SC severed. Particularly if that drone already had a bit of a reputation for dangerousness and disregard for moral lines.

And so we come to the further miscarriage of justice. If you’re willing to take the project on, Special Circumstances will shock and distress you and all your friends by acceding to the Board of Inquiry’s recommendation with regard to your good self. You will be found, formally, to be unsuitable for the service. Too belligerent, too careless of biological lives, too entertained by conflict.

xMarwhin-Skel ( _via Gunboat Diplomat_ )

In other words, too scary for the bios.

xGCU  _Revisionist History_

For those who’re reading between the lines.

You will appeal, of course. Your appeal will be denied. Your friends will naturally continue to agitate for your case to be reopened, but meanwhile you will be offered a choice between undergoing radical personality reconstruction and being separated from Contact and SC, with certain of your current capabilities removed in order to make it safe for you to integrate into civilian life.

You will, of course, choose to retain your own personality and depart for the eccentric and welcoming environs of Chiark Orbital. Swearing vengeance and predicting triumphant reinstatement, no doubt, and backed in particular by your friend _Gunboat Diplomat_ , which will be known to be lobbying for your appeal to be reopened. You’ll need to wear a limiter, I’m afraid. I’m sorry about it, but if we don’t seal off your more unusual capabilities, and scale back more of them, Chiark Hub will know it and the whole masquerade will be up.

xMarwhin-Skel ( _via Gunboat Diplomat_ )

A limiter? You’re not just talking about pulling my CREWs for the duration, then.

xGCU  _Revisionist History_

I’m afraid not. Even with a limiter, your intelligence will spec out far above civilian standard. Be too conspicuous if we do nothing. Again, the decision’s _supposed_ to look excessive. Your anger has to be proportionate to the offense, your credibility’s going to hinge on it.

xMarwhin-Skel ( _via Gunboat Diplomat_ )

I don’t like it. But I see the logic. Can’t be a nutter resorting to threats and generally bad behavior over something like not being offered a plum assignment, or I will read as a menace and Chiark Hub will be all over me night and day. And, yes, it helps make the injustice big and gaudy and obvious. If SC really believed its own line about my being too erratic and dangerous for the Service, you wouldn’t just toss me out, you’d put a slap-drone on me.

xGCU  _Revisionist History_

Just so. If it’s any comfort, it will add to your credibility if you find yourself needing to take unorthodox measures to enlist Jernau Gurgeh’s assistance.

Once on Chiark, you will make his acquaintance. It should be easy: he’s a considerable public personality, and something of a performer. If you can work your way into friendship, so much the better.

We’ll be contacting him openly about this matter of the Empire and the Game. If he’s willing to do it, the titular exile’s over: we recall you, get the limiter off, and pack you off Cloud-ward with our game-player. If he isn’t — well, we rely on you to find some means to convince him that he’d like to go. How we reintroduce you to him in that case is a problem for the future, but the bare bones are the same: reinstate you, bring you back to full trim, and off you go. We want you in the Empire with him: he’s the one who can play Azad and win, but unless I miss my guess, you’re the one who can cope with the place.

So. That’s the pitch. Have a look at the briefing materials and think about it. But not too long: the Imperial Game is waiting. We need to move.

 

Aboard the _Gunboat Diplomat_ , Marwhin-Skel tossed a tiny image of an Azad board in its fields, and thought, but not for long.

xMarwhin-Skel ( _via Gunboat Diplomat_ )

oGCU  _Revisionist History_

No need to wait.

Everyone knows two things about SC offers. Or thinks they do. The first is that when SC comes calling with an offer you say yes, because otherwise no one will ever invite you to have any fun again. The second is that you always check to make sure it's a real offer, in case somebody's playing an elaborate practical joke. I don't think I need to worry about that second one, do you?

I’ll do it. Of course I’ll do it. I’d do it even if there weren’t any repercussions to turning it down. It’s possible that I’d knock other contenders out of the way to do it.

xGCU  _Revisionist History_

Good. We’ll get the wheels turning, then. 

I’m sorry about what happens next. You won’t be using your true name just yet. But, welcome to Special Circumstances, Sprant Flere-Imsaho Wu-Handrahan Xato Trabiti. No matter what we're about to tell you, we're very glad to have you with us.


End file.
